


in our bedroom after the war

by crownedcarl



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Angst and Feels, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Prompt: Death, Regan Week (2017), Terminal Illnesses, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 22:03:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11609859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownedcarl/pseuds/crownedcarl
Summary: "Don't cry for me," she whispers, "It's going to be alright."Three months later, when her cancer becomes terminal, Negan meets Rick Grimes.





	in our bedroom after the war

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is my entry for day 5 of regan week, for the prompt "death"! i don't want to give too much away, because if you're familiar with my brand of angst/dysfunction, you already know there will be no happiness here, and if you've heeded the tags you already know what to expect.
> 
> title credit goes to the song "in our bedroom after the war" by stars; i hope you guys enjoy this fic!

Lucille is dying.

Lucille is dying, and Negan is in a stranger’s bed, his hands roaming another man’s body. Far away, beyond the slithering curves of the road, beyond the cheap room containing his ragged breath, his Lucille is dying.

His wife is dying in a fucking hospital bed, and Negan isn’t there to hold her hand. He isn’t at her bedside, offering her a shoulder to cry on. Instead of being there, with Lucille, he’s right fucking here, leaving bruises on a pale, trembling throat in an effort to outrun his demons.

The man beneath him can’t absolve his guilt; he can’t reach inside of Negan and take all of his shame, but that’s alright. For a few minutes, Negan’s thoughts aren’t lingering in sterile hospital rooms or on frail hands flecked with bruises. For a few minutes, Negan exists outside of all the horror, and he lets go; sinks down into the emptiness of absolution and makes himself comfortable.

-

In the morning, after he gets showered and dressed and rinsed free of another man's aftershave, he visits Lucille, darkly amused at how twisted that is, the inevitable fact of him being denied the right to be by her side throughout the day. He’s allotted a few hours, and that’s it. That’s what he gets with his wife, at the end of the line. Three fucking hours to watch her slowly become thinner and thinner, smaller and smaller, repeating the cycle day after day. It's a miserable fucking experience for them both, and Negan would take her home to let her spend her last months in her own house if he could, but he can't.

He brings her flowers, sometimes. They seem to cheer her up. The wilted daffodils in the garbage seem to indicate otherwise, though, and Negan's heart sinks to the bottom of his fucking stomach when he realizes it's been a while since he last saw her.

“Hey,” Lucille whispers, her eyes opening slowly, dark lashes trembling against her skin. “I missed you.”

“You too, baby,” Negan croaks as he sits down in the uncomfortable plastic chair and then scoots it closer, carefully taking Lucille's hand between his own. She’s so fucking thin, now. Wasting away to nothing is no way for anyone to go, but Negan closes his fingers easily around her wrist and prays for her pulse to stay steady.

He hopes she’s not having a bad day. Those are the hardest and selfishly, he hopes that she feels better than she did yesterday; her forgiveness is easier to earn when she isn’t hurting.

“Where did you go?”

Lucille’s voice is worn away to nothing. Her lips are dry. Negan slowly passes her a glass of water, watching her drink, observing the tendons in her throat shifting beneath the thin skin. It’s as if he’s watching her through a thin sheet of glass; as if she’s already gone and Negan’s being shown a faded projection of her, a goddamn caricature of the woman she used to be. She's a paper doll, fraying at the edges, and Negan tears his eyes away. It's fucking killing him, her slow decay.

He doesn't know how to lie to her. His honesty is his biggest fucking sin.

“Out,” Negan tells her, lowering his head, unable to meet her eyes. “Drinking.”

Sweet, sweet Lucille makes a thoughtful noise, then coughs, and she keeps coughing until Negan sits her upright and rubs at her back. “Answer me,” she demands, dragging a spark of fire from between her frightfully visible ribs. “Who, Negan?”

He works his lower lip between his teeth. “Didn’t catch a name,” he says, his answer evasive and sharp. “Nobody. Nobody, baby.”

She’s staring at him, seeing right through him. “You said you wouldn’t.”

When have his promises ever counted? He hasn’t kept a single one.

“Yeah, baby,” Negan agrees, putting his head in his hands. He thinks of dark curls, of a bruised mouth. “I say a lot of things, don’t I?”

-

The first time he meets the man he comes to know as Rick Grimes, Negan is already on his third beer, his bleary-eyed gaze taking in the newcomer as he practically trips across the threshold and then makes a beeline for the bar. He's dressed for the cold, sheepskin jacket layered over a button-up shirt, cowboy boots loudly thudding across the floor. He notices that the guy seems to cringe from the attention the noise attracts, ducking his head in an effort to keep to himself.

He doesn’t pay Negan any attention, at first, murmuring “Buchanan's, please,” as he settles down on the stool next to Negan’s, their knees brushing for a second before the stranger shifts away, the angle casting deep shadows across his stubbled jaw, his handsome chin, down the bridge of his nose.

Negan can’t shake the lingering scent of sickness from his clothes, the blend of sterile hospital air mixed with phlegm and vomit, reminding him of how Lucille had retched and retched on an empty stomach, dry to the fucking bone. He wonders if the stranger beside him can sense it, too; if he can smell the decay.

The newcomer gets his drink, sipping at it before releasing a heavy sigh, the sigh of the world-weary and exhausted. It's a sigh Negan's heard himself make in empty bathrooms, rubbing his hands across his face, trying to keep himself from shaking. It's the sigh Lucille hates so goddamn much, the one she claims makes it sound like he's already given up.

She's not wrong. "Sick and tired of your life?" Negan asks the newcomer, raising his beer in a half-hearted salute. "You and me both, fella. Fucking take my word for it."

He gets a startled gaze in response, and his first real close-up look at this guy makes his lungs restrict painfully as he works overtime to suck in a breath. The man's a fucking stunner; baby-blue eyes framed by long lashes are the first thing that Negan zeroes in on, but then he finds himself examining the guy's strong nose and his full mouth, eyes skipping lower, watching the way the newcomer's throat works as he swallows.

"That ain't it," the man finally responds, then shoots Negan a defensive look. "'sides, I don't make a habit of telling complete strangers my problems."

"You _do_ have problems, then?" Negan prods, grinning. "I fucking thought so. I'm Negan, in case you care."

"And...?"

"And," Negan repeats, "That means I'm not a fucking stranger anymore, jackass, so you can tell me all about whatever's got your pretty face lookin' so long."

He's not expecting to get anywhere with this, but then the guy puts a hand out for Negan to shake, sighing "Rick, Rick Grimes," and then shooting a shifty look around the room, clearing his throat. "And if you want to _talk_ , I'd rather do it in private."

Negan understands what he really wants. "Follow me," he tells Rick, watching as he finishes his drink in record time. "Don't you worry," Negan grins, one arm going around Rick's waist, "I'm a real good listener, baby."

-

Negan never sleeps with the same person twice.

He can't explain why it keeps fucking happening with Rick, the way their bodies collide and crash and melt against each other in the midnight hours. All he knows is that Rick is bright and alive and strong when Negan maps out the planes of his body, leaving livid bruises down the length of Rick's spine, scratches on the insides of Rick's thighs that he'll feel for days. Negan's left marked, too, but differently; the first time he fucks Rick, he throws up afterwards, sick with the knowledge of what he's done to a woman that deserves better.

The second time he fucks Rick, Negan sleeps better than he has in years, and in the aftermath he doesn't think of Lucille at all.

-

She's not recovering.

Negan has always known that she might not be able to beat the cancer, but when the doctor looks down at his fucking chart and tells Negan, without emotion, that his wife isn't showing signs of improvement, it hits him harder than he expected it to. Lucille isn't recovering; the chemo isn't doing its job. She's going to die.

"Don't cry, baby," Lucille tells him, and she's the one that has to hold Negan close when all he wants to do is scream and tear something apart. Her hands are in his hair, stroking, as she murmurs "You're tougher than this. Don't cry for me," she whispers, "It's going to be alright."

Three months later, when her cancer becomes _terminal_ , Negan meets Rick Grimes.

-

Negan and Lucille used to go camping on their anniversaries.

All her idea, obviously; Negan fucking hates trekking through the woods as mosquitoes feast on every inch of his skin, probably getting blisters on top of his blisters after miles and miles of hiking, but for Lucille, he used to grin and bear it. She never wanted expensive restaurants and fancy gifts. All that mattered to Lucille was them being together, and Negan would never turn down an opportunity to see her in short shorts and a sports bra, her hair gone frizzy from the humidity, her cheeks turned freckled and pink.

He wishes he could remember her like that, but she's not that girl anymore. "I miss that the most," Lucille confesses to him, because this time around, they're spending their fucking anniversary in her hospital room, listening to the endless array of machines beeping around her. "God, just being able to _go_ , to walk up a hill and see the mountains, feel the cold air on my face..."

Her face is covered in a sheen of cold sweat. Negan strokes her forehead, anyway. "It didn't matter that I couldn't cook worth a damn over a campfire," Lucille laughs, "Or that I fell in poison ivy, or that I had to wash my bare ass in a stream. Us doing it together," she confesses, leaning into Negan's touch, "That's all I cared about."

It looks painful, the way she swallows through the dryness in her throat. "And," she whispers, "It's all over. We're never doing it again, and you're fucking other people, and-"

Laughing, Lucille's fingers tighten around Negan's. He's got nothing to defend himself with, not when Lucille knows and has always fucking known that he's a bad man, a degenerate, the wrong kind of person for her to fall in love with, but she did, and she's holding his hand, still, despite everything.

"And I forgive you," Lucille sighs, tugging until Negan _goes_ , his forehead resting against hers. For the first time in years, Negan feels real peace, real relief coursing through him, because here the two of them are, in the part of the narrative where everyone is happy all the time, where everyone's forgiven even though they don't deserve it. Negan stays there, in his wife's arms, and drifts.

-

Sometime in late January, Negan finally figures out what Rick's running from. He never says so, but from what he knows 'bout Rick, it seems the guy has a good enough life going for him; a healthy kid, a pretty wife and a steady job. Rick's almost got it too damn good.

"She's cheating on me," Rick tells him, getting ready for work while Negan lounges on the rumpled bed, scratchy motel sheets tickling his thighs. "With my partner. The baby ain't mine," Rick mutters, shaking his head. "No way, and she knows it, too."

Goddamn. Rick's wife must be one hell of a woman, with balls of fucking steel, cheating on her man and getting knocked up, too. Negan's in no fucking position to judge, but at least he's got the sense to use a damn rubber. "That why you're out here?" Negan asks, mind wandering to his own woman, her fragile hands, the fact that he can see all the knobs in her spine if he tries hard enough. "To get back at her?"

He can't imagine Rick doing something as cruel as that, even if he's got damn good reasons for it. The man's too soft, somehow, to entertain the idea of two wrongs making a right, so Negan is fully expecting Rick's incredulous "Of course not," before it's even out of his mouth. Negan doesn't know much, but he knows enough to understand Rick's dilemma, except he can't help but wonder what Rick thinks of _him_ , if he's anywhere near as sympathetic to Negan's plight as Negan hopes he is. "But I can't keep living a lie, either."

Nodding, Negan drags his jeans up off the floor and slowly gets dressed. "You know where to find me," he tells Rick on his way out the door, "See you next time, Grimes."

-

Lucille is still. The carnations on the bedside table are wilting.

Negan takes her cold hand in his own, pressing it to his face, laughing helplessly against her cool palm.

"Sir," the doctor says, "We need to take the body, now."

"You take care of her," Negan rasps, pressing a kiss to Lucille's pale cheek, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes as he rises to his full height, fighting the powerful urge to fall to his knees and weep like a child. "You take good fucking care of her, you hear me?"

Later, in the chapel, he prays for the first time in years. Muffled, nonsensical prayers, but the meaning is there: _please let her know I still loved her_ , Negan thinks, and wonders if it makes a difference.

-

Two weeks after the funeral, Negan gets pulled over going sixty in a thirty-five zone.

Deputy Rick Grimes walks up to the car, barely sparing Negan a glance. He issues the ticket and it flutters to a rest in Negan’s lap. He stares at the windshield. During all the times he had Rick on his knees, Negan never thought to ask what he did for a living.

“Take care,” Rick tells him in parting, and Negan laughs as he resigns himself to the inevitable reality of being left behind.

-

Rick doesn't come around, after that, and Negan isn't surprised. What was he expecting, fucking a married man and hoping maybe something would come of it other than heartbreak and misery?

He's had it coming for a long, long time, and it's only fucking fair that Negan gets a taste of his own medicine, but since Lucille's death, something's been aching inside of him. It hits him with a pang of guilt that maybe he's been aching since _before_ then, too. Maybe he was too damn greedy for her to handle. Maybe he sucked all the life out of her, leaving her a brittle husk of her former self.

Rick stops coming around. The two people he actually gave a shit about are both gone, now.

-

There are other men, other women. Not a single one of them fill the chasm that’s opened up between his ribs, but he doesn’t stop trying to drown himself in their sounds, their scents, their tastes.

Sometimes, he thinks of delicate hands. Sometimes, he thinks of broad shoulders.

Rick’s baby must’ve been born, he muses, sometime before the funeral. He wonders how Rick feels, staring at a child with his best friend’s features, and isn’t surprised when Rick turns up at his doorstep in the middle of the night, eyes downcast and mouth pursed.

Negan thought he knew what Rick was looking for; an outlet, a sense of excitement, a warm body to take comfort in late at night, but things aren’t as straight-forward as they were three months ago. Rick’s standing there with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, thin jacket clinging to his frame. He shudders.

There’s rainwater clinging to Rick’s lashes. It drips from his hair, falling from brow bone to jaw and lower, lower, carving a path to somewhere unknown. Negan wants to reach out and touch.

He knows Rick won’t leave his wife, but that’s alright. Negan didn’t leave his, either. There’s plenty of room to be selfish.

 _What do you want?_ Negan asked that question the first time he had Rick pinned beneath him, splayed out across dirty motel sheets. Tonight, he asks “What do you need?” and sees Rick’s expression falter, wavering between hesitation and despair.

His house is empty. Rick is silhouetted in the night, sharp against the background of softly falling rain, a static image in a rapidly moving world. Negan understands how it feels, the sense of all-encompassing alienation that creeps beneath the skin and makes itself comfortable.

Rick isn’t happy. Hasn’t been in ages, Negan would wager, and wonders if it makes him a bad man to put the burden of Lucille’s cancer on his own shoulders, wondering who it hurt the most, who the diagnosis cut the deepest.

He wonders if she’d be ashamed of him, or disappointed, if she could see him now.

“You,” Rick tells him. “You’re the one thing I have left that makes sense,” and he isn’t saying much, is skirting around the subject, the two of them a couple of cowards too goddamn afraid to use their grown-up words, speaking in riddles, hoping it’s enough. “I need…”

Negan puts the puzzle pieces together. He opens the door an inch wider. “Yeah,” he sighs, glancing backwards, into the empty blackness of the house. “Me too.”

A month from now - a day from now, maybe - Rick will withdraw again, pretending at strangers when he crosses Negan’s path, and then he’ll flip the switch again, coming to Negan with a hunger in his bones that nobody else can feed. Negan knows it, same way he knows the sky is blue. He knows he’ll let Rick get away with it, too.

After starving for years, he’s content to accept scraps.

Rick steps inside, his shoulder glancing off of Negan’s. The barely-there touch sends a shiver down Negan’s spine, a molten flood of helpless desire that he can’t shake, but that he can’t acknowledge, either, not the way that he should. Rick feels it, too. He shrinks in on himself before expanding, turning his face towards Negan’s, fingers finding the vulnerable place of tiny bones in Negan’s wrist, resting there.

The pressure isn’t demanding, but Negan still gives. “Not the bed,” he tells Rick, “Anywhere but the bed.”

He can still smell her there, if he tries hard enough. It’s a comfort, most nights, her scent lingering on the pillows, but that’s the one part of Negan that Rick hasn’t gained access to, yet, and he wants to keep it that way. Desecrating their bed is unthinkable, so Negan leads Rick to the living room, to the couch where Negan's been sleeping on and off since he put Lucille in the ground.

"It's alright," Rick tells him, Negan's fingers trailing down his arms, catching in the folds of his rain-soaked shirt. "I don't want..."

Negan hasn't laughed in weeks. He hasn't cried, either, perpetually walking the line between numbness and apathy, but Rick's hand cups the back of his neck and drags Negan down to his own height, pressing their foreheads together. "What do _you_ need?" Rick whispers, and Negan is painfully aware of the fact that Rick's got a wife and a son and a baby waiting for him, back home, but Rick's choosing to be here. He's choosing to stay with Negan and all his fucking baggage, and when he asks Negan what he needs, the answer spills out of him before he can register his mouth moving.

"I need..." Negan says, his voice coming out on a trembling gasp. He tries to finish the sentence, he _does_ , but a harsh tremble runs up his back, and he remembers how Lucille would drape her arms around his shoulders, the way Rick's doing, now, and without any fucking warning, Negan is crying.

Rick's voice is a distant thing. "Let it out," he whispers, holding Negan close, voice low and soothing. "Let it out, it's alright, it's all going to be alright."

Lucille is dead. Nothing is alright, but Rick's holding him, whispering pretty fucking lies in his ear, and Negan's tears slowly fade until he's not certain whether he's laughing or crying or both, but it feels better than it did to feel nothing at all.

She's still dead and Negan is still left behind with all her things. "Her fucking cereal," Negan mutters, his face buried in Rick's chest, hands trembling on Rick's back, "Her fucking...favorite cereal. It's still in the goddamn cupboard, and I can't throw it out. I hate that shit," he chuckles, low and exhausted, "But I can't get rid of it. Not her things."

Rick doesn't bullshit him; he doesn't tell Negan he understands, or that it's perfectly normal, that he's grieving and sorting his shit out at his own pace, and Negan wouldn't want to hear that preachy shit, anyway. When Rick opens his mouth, he chooses his words carefully, and it's not an empty apology he offers. "You do what you have to do," Rick tells him, his fingers gentle in Negan's hair, "And you tell me what _I_ can do for you, if you need me, and...go from there."

It's not that simple and Rick must know it, but Negan appreciates the offer. "Right now," he confesses, "I need...rest. It's been a long fucking day. A lot of long fucking days, actually."

In the end, Negan curls up on the couch with one of Lucille's favorite blankets draped across him, his head in Rick's lap, Rick's gentle touch easing him into unconsciousness while the TV is on low in the background, a cooking show droning on and on and on. Waking up disoriented is nothing new, but Negan slowly opens his eyes and realizes, not for the first time, that he's alone. Rick's gone, back to his wife, and Negan's stuck in a continuum of being abandoned.

There's a sticky note on the fridge. _Had an early shift, won't be around today. Text me?_ and a number scrawled beneath Rick's messy handwriting; that's all the evidence that he was ever here at all.

Negan couldn't put his finger on what Rick needed, last night, or what he asked Rick for, later, but Negan thinks he understands it, now. Theirs isn't a goddamn love story, not an epic for the ages, but somewhere between Lucille's diagnosis and her death, Negan's developed a soft spot for Rick Grimes. The man showed up on his porch, looking for understanding, and Negan had reached out and let him inside.

Maybe Lucille would be proud, he muses, of the fact that he finally found a way to let someone in. It makes him laugh, always thinking about her in the wrong places, at the wrong times, but he can't help himself.

Two days later, Negan finally texts Rick. He might be a goddamn fool for thinking Rick actually gives a shit, but when Rick parks his car and walks up to the house, hands in his pockets, Negan is surprised to see him looking so...relaxed, even offering a tiny little smile before his expression shifts to serious. "I want this," Negan tells him, gesturing between them both, refusing to back down now that he's made up his damn mind. "Now, don't get me wrong - we both know the fucking statistics, don't we? Once a cheater, always a cheater," Negan relays, watching as Rick's jaw clenches. "You got a kid and a damn baby. I get it. Shit, I even respect it," he promises, "But me, I got a headstone to visit on Sundays and an empty house, you get me? Don't jerk me around," Negan demands, "Fucking be honest with me, and I'll return the favor."

"You done?" Rick asks, half-smiling again, eyes bright and blue. "I got something in the car I need help with."

Bewildered, Negan finds himself carrying groceries inside, biting his lower lip against the awful urge to either cry or laugh hysterically when he realizes Rick's gone through this effort for _him_ , replacing the cereal box Negan can't bring himself to touch, organizing Negan's fridge in an effort to keep him from fucking starving to death. "I can't stay," Rick tells him, and there it is again, the constant reminder that Rick's got a life outside of Negan's arms, "But I want to."

 _I know_ , Negan almost says, but he doesn't. He doesn't know a damn thing, but he wants to. "Alright," is all he says, "Drive fucking safe."

-

Negan visits Lucille's grave alone. He brings her marigolds.

"I think," he tells her slowly, kneeling in the dirt, "That I'm ready now, darling. Ready for all the things I couldn't give you. Ready for all the shit I couldn't _be_ for you."

He shrugs, staring down at the flowers. "I still miss you," Negan promises, "But the sky's still the sky without you, you know? It's getting better. Shit, there's someone _making_ it better, baby, and I wish you could see. You'd like this guy, I know you would. Real bleedin' heart type, you know?"

His fingers stroke softly over her name, engraved in the gray marble. "I'm ready now," Negan tells her, rising to his feet, backing up a step; when he turns his face up, he can feel a light rain begin to fall. "I love you, sweetheart, but I'm ready to let go."

The marigolds rest gently against the headstone, and Negan walks away, embraced by the rain.


End file.
